Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle St John, who
in our Gospel reading today, John 20:19-31, saw the wounds of the resurrected Jesus
with his own eyes, together with the other 10 disciples, was sent by him and
had the Holy Spirit breathed out upon him. And I’ll read a couple of verses:
Peace be
with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you… Receive the Holy
Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold
forgiveness from any, it is withheld.
Prayer: Lord
Jesus Christ, send to all of us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well,
and to all of us that we may hear well. May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our
Redeemer. Amen.
In the book
of Daniel, chapter 9, there is a wonderful prayer that the prophet Daniel
prays, asking for the forgiveness of sin for himself and the people.
Anyway, this
is a very long prayer, and you can read it at home. But something that has
always interested me is what happens after Daniel this prayer. We read: While
I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel,
and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, while
I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the
first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He made
me understand, speaking with me and saying, “O Daniel, I have now come out to
give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a
word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved.”
What a
wonderful message this angel Gabriel brings! And I must say that from an
earthly, fleshly point of view, I’m a little bit jealous of Daniel. So many
times, when I’ve looked back at a particular day, a particular week, or part of
my life, and seen all my regrets, my mistakes, my bad judgments, all my sin –
boy! – I would love to have the angel Gabriel come flying in through my bedroom
window, and say to me just as he said to Daniel: At the beginning of your
pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are
greatly loved. Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be a
wonderful thing to happen?
But this is
not how it happens. So often we end up
feeling cold and lonely when we’ve confessed our sin to God, especially when
it’s something that’s really troubling us, because we would so desperately love
to hear God give us an answer, to assure us that he loves us, to speak to us
the forgiveness of our sin.
And yet,
after Jesus rises from the dead, he sets about to make sure that troubled
sinners are comforted.
If we were
alive before the crucifixion of Jesus, we could have gone to meet him and hear
him say those wonderful words to us: Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has
saved you; go in peace!
But we also
know that Jesus is not accessible to us in that visible way anymore. Jesus
says: It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the
Comforter will not come to you. Jesus is not going away, in the sense that
he’s not here anymore. After all he says: I will be with you always to the
end of the age. But he goes away when he ascends into heaven in such a way
that he is no longer visible. He’s promises to be here with us,
but we can’t see him.
But if Jesus
going to be with us, is he going to keep his mouth shut? Is he going to
be with us, but never speak to us again? Is he so unloving that once he
has ascended into heaven, we will never hear anymore his wonderful voice, that
wonderful, comforting voice of our Good Shepherd?
Let’s read
what Jesus does:
On the
evening of [Easter] day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked
where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them
and said, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands
and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said
to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am
sending you.”
This is
amazing. Here are the twelve disciples, (minus Judas and minus Thomas) all of
whom had deserted him when he was arrested, and he comes and says to them: Peace
be with you. After all of their shame, all their sin, all their guilt and
confusion and fear, he comes to them, just like the angel Gabriel came to
Daniel, and brings an answer to their prayers.
They say: God,
what do you think of us failures? What are you going to with us? What are we
going to do now? Jesus comes and says: Peace be with you.
Remember how at Christmas time,
the angels sang: Peace on earth. Now Jesus comes after his resurrection
and he says: Peace be with you. Let me now give you peace on earth.
And then, Jesus shows them where
this peace comes from. We read: When he said this, he showed them his hands
and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. The
peace that passes all understanding is the peace that comes from Jesus’ wounds.
Here are the disciples thinking what failures they were. And Jesus comes and
says: Look. See my hands—everyone in the world thinks that these wounds are a
sign that I was the greatest failure that ever lived. Everyone thinks now that
these wounds are the very proof that I wasn’t really the Son of God after all.
But now I’m showing them to you again in a new way, to prove that I am the same
Good Shepherd who suffered and died for you. Yes, I know you failed, and you
had to fail because I had to die alone. And now, I’m coming to share my victory
with each of you, and to give you the perfect peace that only comes from me,
the peace which passes all understanding, the peace which I pour out to you
from my wounds.
But then Jesus does something so
unexpected. He says to these disciples: As the Father has sent me, even so I
am sending you.
Just as the Father sent me into
the world, so I am sending you also into the world. Just as the Father even
sent me here today to speak my peace to you, and show you my wounds, so I am
sending you to preach my peace to people and to preach my suffering and death
for them.
And Jesus says to them: As the
Father has sent me, even so I am sending you. And when he had said this, he
breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the
sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it
is withheld. Well, think about those words. What is Jesus asking the
apostles to do? In Matthew 11, we read where John sent a messenger to Jesus and
asked: Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?
Jesus answered them: Go and
tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame
walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and
the poor have good news preached to them.
If the Father sent Jesus to do
these things, is Jesus sending out his apostles to do these kind of things too?
Jesus says: As the Father sent me, even so I am sending you. Are all the
apostles supposed to heal the blind, the lame, lepers, the deaf and raise the
dead? Is this what all the pastors of the church are supposed to do?
Jesus explains exactly what he
means—He says: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they
are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. Jesus
wants to say to them: I am going to give you a special ministry. It is a
ministry that doesn’t belong to you, but it belongs to the Holy Spirit. You
won’t be able to take any credit for what you do, but the Holy Spirit will work
through you. And the job I am giving you to do, is to administer the
forgiveness of people’s sins. If you forgive the sins of any, they are
forgiven them. This forgiveness is not your forgiveness, but this is God’s
forgiveness. Jesus wants to put this forgiveness of sins not on the lips of an
angel, as when Gabriel went to Daniel. That was a once-off. He wants to put his
forgiveness in the mouth of these 11 disciples, and then throughout the history
of the church, this ministry continues when this word is put on the lips of
pastors.
It’s not enough simply to tell
people that Jesus rose and that many people saw him and were sent to preach
about him. We pastors are also called to forgive your sins on behalf of
Christ, not because he is absent, but because he is present and wants to speak
through the pastor. And pastors do this every Sunday. Jesus said: If you forgive anyone their
sins, they are forgiven. So pastors say: On behalf of my Lord Jesus
Christ and by his command, I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus also says: If you
withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. Once again, sometimes people
are living in some kind of sin, and have absolutely no desire to repent of it,
and don’t care what the bible says about them. If a pastor withholds
forgiveness, it’s not because he personally withholds it, but because Jesus
clearly shows in his word that he withholds forgiveness, just as he withheld it
from the Pharisees and other people. And even though he may have withheld
forgiveness, he still prays: Father forgive them for they know not what they
are doing.
Nobody would care to come to
church on Sunday if Stephen van der Hoek, or some other pastor forgave you. But
what if Jesus put a pastor in the church so that He himself could come and
forgive you? Wouldn’t you just want to come all the time and receive this
wonderful gift? You could even badger your pastor at other times to speak this
word to you personally and privately – you’re very welcome.
This is what pastors do. We bring
to you the forgiveness of sins. And when we do, we speak to you the peace of
Jesus, the peace of Jesus’ holy and precious wounds. This is the peace of the
Holy Spirit, the peace of Jesus’ own words. Pastors even heal the blind, the
deaf, the lame, and raise the dead. Maybe we don’t this physically, but we get
the job started, because when you hear the preaching of the forgiveness of
sins, and receive the absolution, you can be sure that this word has the living
power to heal you completely, physically, spiritually and bodily in the next
life and at the resurrection of the dead, when you will see Jesus face to face
with your own eyes, no blindness, no deafness, no lameness, no death. So yes,
what Jesus says is true: As the Father sent me, even so I am sending you.
And the apostles had a special
custom which is still continued today of laying their hands upon new pastors,
to continue this ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s called
“ordination”. But there’s a difference between the apostles and other pastors:
The apostles tell people that they saw the resurrected Lord, and were sent
directly by him. But as a pastor, my job is not to tell you that I personally
saw the resurrected Lord, but to point you to the eyewitnesses of the
apostles, and to show you that they saw him, and to preach to you what they
said about him. And we know what they saw because some of them wrote it down,
and what they wrote down is called “The New Testament”.
Jesus didn’t write anything down
himself. Everything we know about him we know from the writings of the
apostles, and we’ll just have to take their word for it. It’s the only thing
we’ve got!
You might think that that’s a bit
unsatisfying. Well, so did Thomas. He wasn’t there, and he said to his fellow
disciples: Ha! I’m not going to take your word for it. Don’t you tell me about
Jesus saying, “Peace be with you”. Don’t you tell me about the peace of Jesus’
wounds. I’m not listening to your “Peace, peace”, where there’s no peace. I
want to see those wounds for myself! Unless I see in his hands the mark of
the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand
into his side, I will never believe.
Well, Jesus satisfied Thomas,
because he wanted him as one of these original apostles. So a week after Easter
he came again and said, Peace be with you. Put your finger here, and see my
hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but
believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have
you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and
yet have believed.”
Now listen to me, Thomas, says
Jesus. Everyone in my church in the rest of history is going to want to be like
you and see my wounds for themselves. But they’re not going to until their
dead. In the meantime, they’re going to have to take your word for it! Everyone
in the future who is going to be my disciple is going to be one who comes under
this blessing: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
What a joy it is to take the
apostles’ word for it! What a joy it is to be one of those who have not seen
Jesus but believed.
Thomas is completely overjoyed!
He says: My Lord and my God!
And just at the end of our Gospel
reading, we have a little note from the apostle John. He was there on both
these occasions, with and without Thomas, and he wants to let you know as one
of his future readers, that yes, our eyewitness, our preaching, our ministry,
our writing, is the only thing that you’ve got to go on. How he must have
sensed the importance and the weight of his task and of his ministry!
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, we
rejoice and praise you for the things that are written in this book for our
benefit, so that we can believe that you really are the Christ, the Son of God,
our Lord and our God, and that by believing we may have life in your name.
Strengthen us with your peace, the peace of your wounds, your forgiveness, your
Holy Spirit. Amen.
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